Living the high life

The city skylines around us have been undergoing a change over the past few years, evolving from widespread, low-lying urban areas to condensed spaces which contain multiple high-rise developments.

The expectations being placed on this new generation of high-rise buildings are significant and come from many directions, including the wellbeing of residents, government regulations, sustainability standards, client budgets and long-term operational practicalities. With such a long list of stakeholders to appease and performance criteria to comply with, the design and construction of today’s multi-storey buildings has never been more complex.

In addition, the ongoing issues brought to the fore by the Grenfell disaster alongside the uncertainty of Brexit and more recently COVID-19 have all been making distinct impacts in the construction industry and its ability to deliver tomorrow’s built environment.

Despite all this, it appears the trend for building ever higher residential and commercial buildings across the UK’s major cities has not been affected, with recent research finding that London alone has more than 500 buildings of 20 storeys or above currently under development.

To understand the demands being placed on the construction industry in more depth, Uponor undertook research among 200 architects, contractors and developers to gather their insights on the expectations facing the sector with regards to the delivery of high-rise buildings, and how feasible they are. Three priority themes for the research were identified based on academic research, the news headline and industry-wide discussions. These themes are:

• Healthy buildings
• Technology in construction
• Net-zero buildings

The findings from this were presented to a range of M&E experts to get their reactions on how the evolving nature of the industry is affecting their work and to gather suggestions on how the sector can overcome the issues it faces.

The combined results and consequent report provide unique insights into the views of the construction professionals responsible for creating the buildings dominating the skylines around us and whether they think the challenges the sector faces are realistic, or whether large-scale change is needed to deliver the types of buildings required.

To read the report in full, download below.